Where 'rustic' is strictly outdoors

By Eric Lucas
Special to The Times
June 4 2006

THE Hotel Adara entrance, an inconspicuous plank doorway on a quiet cul-de-sac, opens into a compact lobby with a vermilion circular settee and a coffee bar decorated with votives. A local artist's wry epoxy deer-antler sculptures hang overhead, vivid crimson.

The Adara, the newest hip lodging in North America's most conspicuous ski village, advertises itself as "Whistler style unzipped," and they're not kidding. Everything about this part of British Columbia style is big and quasi-rustic: vast lobbies with timber beams and river-rock pillars. The Adara is just about the opposite in every way — 41 rooms, neon hues, artificial fibers. Designed and operated by the same folks responsible for Vancouver's hugely popular Opus Hotel, the Hotel Adara is as unsnooty and antirustic as it gets.

Bunking down: The lobby's vermilion settee has mates in each room, in a couch-type piece of furniture that looks like Andy Warhol's version of a loveseat in a color picked by Roy Lichtenstein. The desk chair is Jetsons-like white molded plastic. Fake-fur throws, one white, one black, cover bed and chair. The fixtures are zebrawood. The molding and trim are black. The bedside tables are mirror-faced. The only evidence of that Whistler standard, exposed fir, is an ironic decorative plank hung over the orange bedstead. Somehow it all works, though you would never describe it as soothing.

Hanging around: Bearfoot Bistro is across the street and, in fact, supplies room service. Bearfoot, one of the best restaurants in Whistler, offers no-nonsense, high-style fish and game, not for delicate palates. The dinner burger, for instance, is a mix of venison, buffalo and caribou.

Going out: Whistler's Village Square is a one-minute walk. Here are bars and restaurants of every description, and board-totin' free-riders clog the patios whenever the lifts are closed and the temperature's above 20. Other village icons, such as Quattro and Araxi, famed Mobil four-star restaurants, are a minute farther.

More important, it's just a five-minute walk from Adara to the base for Whistler and Blackcomb gondolas. That's in ski boots; boarders can cut a minute off that time.

Perks and peeves: The bedside radio-alarm clock has an iPod docking station. No iPod? They'll lend you one. The minibar is well-stocked with Red Bull. Do you detect a theme here? If you're tired of noise (a Whistler constant), the other bedside appliance is a "sonic soother" offering the sounds of oceans, rainstorms, summer nights and, no kidding, Yosemite Falls. In-room coffee service is a French press, with an admirably ample supply of free-trade grounds.

In the bath, there's a "personal oxygen" device ($15). I didn't need that, and I was hard-pressed to come up with peeves. The walls are a little thin, so I listened to a neighbor's endearments to her sweetie — but then there is that white-noise machine. Oh, and try as I might, I could not figure out how to operate the TV/pay-per-view movie remote. But I'd spent seven hours spring skiing, and watching a movie proved a silly notion anyhow: I fell asleep almost instantly listening to the sound of crickets in August.

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